Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt in 51–30 BC, said her retainer died from laughter after witnessing her husband's death.

Zeuxis, a 5th-century BC Greek painter, is said to have died laughing at the humorous way he painted the goddess Aphrodite – after the old woman who commissioned it insisted on modeling for the portrait.[8]

One ancient account of the death of Chrysippus, the 3rd-century BC GreekStoic philosopher, tells that he died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laertius 7.185).[9]

In 1799, William Cushing, a pauper who lived in the parish of St Andrew's, Norwich, England, died from "a fit of excessive laughter, which lasted five minutes."[14]

In 1893, farmer Wesley Parsons laughed to death over a joke told in Laurel, Indiana. He laughed for nearly an hour. He then died two hours after the incident.[15]

On 24 March 1975, Alex Mitchell, from King's Lynn, England, died laughing while watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, featuring a kilt-clad Scotsman with his bagpipes battling a master of the Lancastrianmartial art "Eckythump", who was armed with a black pudding. After 25 minutes of continuous laughter, Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and died from heart failure. His widow later sent The Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments of life so pleasant.[16][17][18][19][20] Diagnosis of his granddaughter in 2012 of having the inheritable long QT syndrome (a heart rhythm abnormality) suggests that Mitchell may have died of a cardiac arrest caused by the same condition.[21]

The 1988 movie comedy A Fish Called Wanda features a scene where actor Michael Palin gets some French fries stuffed up his nose and a pear in the mouth. In 1989, a Danish audiologist named Ole Bentzen found the scene so sidesplittingly funny that his heart rate rose to an estimated 250–500 beats per minute, leading to a fatal heart attack.[22]

According to Greek mythology, the seer Calchas died after another seer's prediction about his death seemed to turn out incorrect, thus fulfilling the prediction.

In the video game Fallout, a gangster named Victor may die from laughter after speaking to a player character whose intelligence statistic is too low.

In "The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eeek", from the Give Yourself Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine, it is possible to get an ending where chimpanzees tickle the protagonist's feet until death of laughter.

In the Batman franchise, famed villain The Joker often kills his victims using a poison that causes uncontrollable and quickly fatal fits of manic laughter – the victim's corpse is often left with a huge ghastly smile reminiscent of the Joker's own. In the 1989 film, a news broadcast reporting a scheme involving this toxin (named "Smilex" in this film) is cut short when one of the reporters begins laughing hysterically, before collapsing dead with the characteristic rictus.

At the end of the film Mary Poppins, Mr. Dawes, Sr. is said to have died laughing after being told a joke.

The third installment in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel series, Life, The Universe and Everything, featured a character named Prak who had been exposed to an extraordinary dose of truth serum, and as a result had recited "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" over an extended period. When he meets Arthur Dent he goes into fits of laughter so severe that they kill him over the course of the next several days.

In the 1932 film The Mummy, a young Egyptologist ignores the warning of a curse written on a casket and opens it, within which he finds and transcribes the Scroll of Thoth. After reading it, he restores to life the mummy of Imhotep. The curse upon him, he begins laughing uncontrollably, and is later mentioned to have died laughing "in a straightjacket".